Tapu Misa: It's just as well some women are having more children

I know some folk are convinced that there's a sizeable group of women out there whose sole ambition in life is to have babies merely so they can enjoy a life of luxury at the taxpayers' expense. If so, I'd like to know their secret.

Frankly, if they can have any kind of life on the DPB, let alone a luxury one, while producing one baby after another, then they're obviously clever people who deserve every cent of their benefit. And that being the case, we should be encouraging them to have more, for the good of the country.

After all, someone has to - especially as the rest of us are too busy waiting for the right economic circumstances, paying off the student loan, trying to buy that first house (in our lifetime, we hope), climbing the career ladder or ensuring we can still afford our late-model cars and overseas trips, as well as good wine on the table.

I see the Australians are having a similar problem finding people prepared to perform this important public service. According to a just-released report from Australia's Fertility Decision-Making Project, as many as two-thirds of Australians between 20 and 39 don't expect to get around to having the two children they say they want because they'll be too busy pursuing the "necessities" of employment, education and housing, which even there is taking much longer to achieve.

Of course, there are calls for policies to make it easier for young Australians to breed and thereby raise the low fertility rate of 1.75 for each woman. But really, who can blame them for worrying about the financial cost of children? If I looked at my children in strictly financial terms, I'd have to conclude that they're far too expensive - particularly at this time of the year.

Thrilled as I was to send them off to their various schools this week, I couldn't help feeling that the sense of lightness I was experiencing wasn't so much my relief at finally getting the house to myself as it was about the weight of my wallet after being relieved of large sums of money.

Of course, it was all in the worthy cause of education - uniforms, stationery, camp and the controversial parent donation which has so many people in a lather. In Auckland, the so-called donation can go as high as the $740 levied by Auckland Grammar.

All of which has raised questions, as it invariably does at this time of year. Whatever happened to free education? And how much exactly does a high-quality education cost? Does the Government provide enough to ensure every student has a quality education as of right, regardless of their parents' ability to pay?

The Government, of course, would say it does. The Associate Education Minister, David Benson-Pope, says parent contributions remain at 6 per cent of total funding, that this Government has put in 13 per cent more money in real terms since 1999 than National did when it was in power and that schools are funded sufficiently to provide the core curriculum.

Most schools argue that there's a shortfall, which they're finding increasingly tough to meet. A growing number of schools are relying on income from overseas students, the pokies, and a never-ending stream of fundraisers. Including my children's school, where we forked out not just for the annual donation but also activities fees (for school trips, photocopying and classroom equipment), fundraising chocolate, discount books, sausage sizzles and library books. And still the school was faced with either cutting back on teaching hours or posting a deficit.

It might have helped if everyone had paid that voluntary donation. Interestingly, when the school looked at those parents who'd failed to pay, they found they were more likely to be their most well-heeled customers, who knew they didn't have to pay, rather than those who came from the poor, brown end of the zone.

The principal of the decile 3 school to which I send my daughter complains, too, that while there seems to be plenty of money sitting around in contestable funds, a school can invest an inordinate amount of time and effort in the paperwork needed to convince the Ministry of Education to part with it - only to be turned down. Frankly, they'd rather spend that time teaching.

Still, Benson-Pope does have a point about parent expectations driving up costs. The wealthy Auckland Grammar asks for $740 because parents demand education with all the bells and whistles - and they can afford to pay for it.

Tamaki College, at the other end of the scale, asks for nothing because its parents can't afford to pay and it can provide a good, basic education with what it has. But the school principal, David Hodge, knows that much more could be done if the school had more money. For example, catch-up literacy classes for kids who tend to start school several years behind their middle-class counterparts, and extra homework tuition.

Of course, the whole idea of children getting only the education their parents can afford is one that doesn't sit well with most educators. As PPTA president Phil Smith commented last year, the Government needs to find out what it really costs to run a school, and put more money into low-decile schools to make them schools of choice.

For despite the griping from middle-class communities over quality and the increasing costs of education, the problem is at the other end. The top 80 per cent of our students rank among the best in the developed world, but the gap between them and the lowest 20 per cent is the second-widest in the OECD. Most of that tail end is concentrated in lower-decile schools, and most are Maori or Pacific Island students.

If these schools are "awash with money", as Bill English once claimed, it certainly doesn't show.

Tamaki College may boast state-of-the-art facilities as good as any in the country, but the Government paid for only part of it. For example, the Ministry of Education contributed only $500,000 to its $3.9 million recreation centre; the rest came from Auckland City and the ASB Trust.

Hodge would agree with the Government that good-quality teachers are the key to student achievement but even the best teachers find it hard to "work their magic" if they're not well supported and resourced.

And as John Minto, the head of science at Tangaroa College, wrote in the NZ Journal of Teachers' Work last year, the Government needs to provide a level of funding that ensures "all New Zealand children get a high-quality education as a right of citizenship".

Teaching, as he pointed out, is a bottomless pit. They can always do more. For some communities, though, "more" is not a luxury - it's a necessity.